Experience roasting coffee beans at a traditional Japanese cafe and grind and taste freshly roasted beans. Enjoy your own time with "specialty coffee," a high-quality coffee with a rich, original flavor of the beans (Minami Awaji, Hyogo)

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The place is in the Shitoori district of Minami Awaji City, where pastoral rural scenery spreads out before you. After getting off the car, you walk for two minutes along a country road surrounded by trees to a quiet, hidden old-fashioned cafe called "Fuku Cafe," where you will find the Awaji Island Coffee Laboratory "BASE COFFEE." If the cafe is a hideaway, this laboratory has the atmosphere of a "secret base."
The owner, who is obsessed with the depth and indefinable charm of coffee as a luxury item, continues to research and hone his skills every day in order to understand coffee on a deeper level and in pursuit of making "coffee that makes you smile and makes you want to tell others about it."

The owner carefully selects coffee beans from producing areas all over the world, including Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, and thoroughly manages the process from cultivation to harvesting and transportation. Using these top-quality beans, you can experience roasting, the most important process that determines the taste and aroma of coffee.
For the roasting process, we use a roasting pan called "Mankashakasha", which is actually used in Ethiopia, one of the countries from which we source our beans.
You can choose to roast lightly to bring out the fruity aroma and acidity of citrus fruits, or darkly to bring out the richness and bitterness of chocolate, or you can aim for something in between. Either way, the challenge is that the heat must be conducted thoroughly to the center in order to remove the moisture contained in the raw beans. Also, when roasting in a hand pan, even if you choose the same beans and try to do it the same way, the way the beans roll and the way the wind hits them will affect the heat conduction, so even if you choose the same beans and try to do it the same way, even if the conditions are slightly different, no two beans will taste the same, and you will create an original flavor. The staff will give you a thorough lecture, so feel free to give it a try.

When the roasted beans are cooled and ground in a coffee mill, a variety of aromas emerge, including notes of nuts, caramel, and citrus. This is the moment when the coffee beans give off the most aroma in their lives.
There are hundreds of aromatic elements that create the complex, rich aroma of coffee that captivates so many people.

And then there's the finishing process. Hot water is poured over the aromatic freshly ground beans to extract the maximum amount of aroma and flavor, but there is a proper way to pour the water. When you take a sip of the carefully extracted coffee, you'll surely find yourself smiling.

The aroma of coffee has a relaxing effect and a refreshing effect that clears the brain. In a place where time flows slowly, please spend the best time for yourself tasting your original coffee brewed with beans prepared while imagining your favorite taste!

*One cup of roasted and ground beans will be used for tasting purposes, but you can take the remaining beans home with you.

What is specialty coffee?
- The flavor of the coffee liquid in the cup held by the consumer (coffee drinker) must be excellent, and the consumer must evaluate it as delicious and be satisfied with the coffee.
- It has a distinctive and impressive flavour profile, with a refreshing bright acidity profile and a lingering coffee flavour that fades into a sweet sensation.
・A consistent system, process, and quality control are in place at every stage from coffee beans (seeds) to the cup. (From seed to cup)
More specifically, "the beans are produced through proper cultivation management, harvesting, production processing, sorting and quality control in the producing country, and are therefore extremely free of defective beans," "the beans are roasted without deterioration through proper transportation and storage, and are free of defective beans," and "the beans are properly extracted, and the wonderful flavor characteristics characteristic of the producing region are expressed in the cup."

Coffee that meets all these criteria is defined as "specialty coffee" by the Specialty Coffee Association of Japan (SCAJ).
(Extract from the Japan Specialty Coffee Association website: https://scaj.org/about/specialty-coffee)

＜Awards＞
The Specialty Coffee Association of Japan (SCAJ) has been holding this event every year since 2005 at Tokyo Big Sight. It is one of the leading specialty coffee events in Asia, bringing together coffee-producing countries and regions from Central and South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and other areas, as well as industry professionals and all kinds of coffee-related products. Famous roasters and baristas are invited from Japan and abroad to take part in various events and demonstrations. In the various competitions held on stage, heated battles are waged for the title of number one in Japan.
At the Roast Masters Team Challenge (national coffee roasting competition) held at the same event in 2021, the Chugoku/Kansai team, consisting of five members including the owner, won both the "Judges' Award 1st Place" and the "Audience Award 1st Place" at the same time, a first in SCAJ history, and took home the championship.

Experience Schedule [Itinerary]
1. Explanation of the origins and characteristics of coffee beans, roasting methods, etc.
2. Selecting coffee beans
3. Experience roasting coffee using a roasting pot (mankashakasha) used in Ethiopia
4. Explanation of how to make delicious coffee using roasted and ground beans (extraction)
5. Tasting the brewed coffee *You can take home any coffee beans left over from the tasting.